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I will be honest – I did a happy dance when this pattern arrived through my letterbox as part of the pattern swap and not least because someone let the postman into the close!! I had been hankering after this pattern for the longest time and finally I could get to work. I had the perfect fabric sourced and a zip had been sent as a supplementary gift so I was all set to go on return from my holiday.

Then disaster struck and my plans were blown out of the water. As my grandmother has always been really enthusiastic about my sewing hobby I knew that I wanted to make a dress for the funeral and what better a plan than to make up the dress which has been the source of so much excitement for a woman who meant so much to me?

The fabric I purchased for this new vision of the dress was a dark blue with gold outlined flowers. I saw it and instantly knew that this would be the perfect fabric. It is a kind of hybrid between a lawn and a poplin. I cant decide which! It came in at around £6/m too so – bargain! I couldn’t find a zip that I really wanted but I think my second choice works just fine. I had to stitch over the ends of the zipper as it was open ended.

For the bodice and as per my measurements (38:31.5) I made up the size 14. Having never sewn a gather pattern before I never made any preemptive fitting adjustments. This size worked mostly well for me however for next time I have noted a few small changes.

take around 1 inch of length out of the back – around 1/2 for a sway back and 1/2 for short back

make a large bust adjustment of around 1 inch

make the dress in a heavier fabric – I really want the pleats to stand out

remember to add my standard pocket piece! (from the cambie)

For the skirt however I went a little off piste… As I was really limited for time I decided to make the pleats up and place them myself based on the width of fabric rather than the slightly narrower pattern pieces. I didn’t want to copy off the skirt pieces and carefully copy over all the notches. So i aligned up the side seams and the centre back and front and then divided up the remaining fabric to give me the required number of pleats. I thought it worked well adn is an alteration that I think I will proceed with. I also cut the fabric to a custom length based on the length between my natural waist and knee. Unlike my kim however I remembered seam and hem allowances…

I really hope you like the dress I certainly do and it’s one that I enjoy wearing for the sentimental reasons that I have noted. I have really enjoyed indie pattern month and seeing everyones wonderful takes upon all the challenges however really disappointed that I havent been able to complete everything that I had planned.

Hi, looks FAB. How lovely to create a dress specially for the occasion. The zip works well although I can’t work out what it is you’ve done differently with the skirt. I already have another Mortmain cut out but things keep jumping to the head of the pile. Enjoy your weekend x

overall the skirt is almost exactly the same as off the pattern pieces – the diference being that the fabric that I used was wider than the pattern pieces so I had to adjust the positioning and the width of the pleats. 🙂